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Previous research has shown that business-to-business (B2B) brand image has positive effects on customer loyalty. However, the results have been inconsistent because they have highlighted that B2B brand image has either direct or mediated effects on loyalty. Drawing on the framework of service transition, this study aims to develop and test a model that reconciles previous findings. This model suggests that goods-related and service-related B2B brand images coexist in customers’ perceptions and impact customer loyalty in different ways.

A model was developed and estimated using covariance-based structural equation modeling. The data used in the analysis were collected through a survey in the Italian health-care industry, focusing on the relationship between hearing aid manufacturers and audiologists.

Both goods-related and service-related B2B brand images have positive effects on loyalty. However, while the effects of goods-related image on loyalty are fully mediated by satisfaction, service-related image has both direct and mediated effects on loyalty.

This study reconciles previous work arguing that B2B brand image has either direct or mediated effects on loyalty by focusing on the transition from a goods-oriented logic for branding to service branding. In particular, the analysis focuses on the role of the brand in the co-creation process, suggesting that a service-related brand image reflects the value unfolding over time through co-created experiences. However, additional research needs to be conducted in other industries before the results can be generalized.

The findings provide managers with insights for the co-creation of their B2B brand images. In particular, the results urge managers to integrate the traditional goods-oriented approach to branding with service branding, showing that enriching B2B brand image with service-related aspects will have a direct and positive effect on loyalty. However, brand image cannot be created or changed unilaterally by the firm as it is determined by the customer based on co-creation experiences.

This is the first study to explicitly and separately consider the effects of goods-related and service-related aspects of B2B brand image on loyalty. It also is one of the first studies to apply service logic to B2B branding issues.

The authors investigate the role of people-related Total Quality Management (TQM) practices, specifically metaperceptions, in hearing care students' vocational decision-making. In Italy, audiologists are health professionals and must hold a degree in hearing care. They operate according to clinical principles but must also develop marketing and commercial skills. While employers take these aspects for granted, the expectations of hearing care students often differ from reality. Thus, the authors aim to investigate the vocational expectations of hearing care students.

A survey was distributed to 600 hearing care students. Multiple regression analysis with bootstrapped confidence intervals was employed to test the hypotheses.

Students who perceived audiology as their calling were more interested in the clinical aspects than the marketing and commercial aspects of audiology. Moreover, those desiring a meaningful career path in audiology were more interested in becoming a store owner or franchisee.

Universities and recruiters should consider the influence of relevant others' metaperceptions on students' self-perceptions of their aptitudes for different careers. Universities should assist students to identify aptitudes that are relevant to career-related decision-making. In this context, people-related TQM can help students avoid incorrect aspirations and expectations.

This study is the first to investigate the role of metaperceptions from a people-related TQM perspective. Metaperceptions play a crucial role in determining the correct course of study as well as job satisfaction and expectations.

The purpose of this study is to introduce new tools to develop a more precise and focused bibliometric analysis on the field of digitalization in healthcare management. Furthermore, this study aims to provide an overview of the existing resources in healthcare management and education and other developing interdisciplinary fields.

This work uses bibliometric analysis to conduct a comprehensive review to map the use of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) research models in healthcare academic studies. Bibliometric studies are considered an important tool to evaluate research studies and to gain a comprehensive view of the state of the art.

Although UTAUT dates to 2003, our bibliometric analysis reveals that only since 2016 has the model, together with UTAUT2 (2012), had relevant application in the literature. Nonetheless, studies have shown that UTAUT and UTAUT2 are particularly suitable for understanding the reasons that underlie the adoption and non-adoption choices of eHealth services. Further, this study highlights the lack of a multidisciplinary approach in the implementation of eHealth services. Equally significant is the fact that many studies have focused on the acceptance and the adoption of eHealth services by end users, whereas very few have focused on the level of acceptance of healthcare professionals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to conduct a bibliometric analysis of technology acceptance and adoption by using advanced tools that were conceived specifically for this purpose. In addition, the examination was not limited to a certain era and aimed to give a worldwide overview of eHealth service acceptance and adoption.

The purpose of this study is to explore South African and Italian consumers' attitude toward online wine purchasing. In detail, through the application of the technology acceptance model (TAM), this research intends to explain the antecedents of consumers actual online purchasing of wine in South Africa and Italy.

Two questionnaire-based surveys were conducted, yielding a sample of 190 consumers in South Africa and 179 in Italy. Data were analyzed through several techniques including t-tests, principal component factor analyses, and binary logistic regressions.

Overall, the findings show that South African and Italian online wine consumers are more similar than the offline wine consumers. However, perceived usefulness has an impact on the use of the online channel to purchase wine in Italy but not in South Africa, whereas perceived complexity has an effect in South Africa but not in Italy.

This study adopts a convenience sampling technique, suggesting that the used samples are not representative of the whole population. Moreover, TAM offers a simple and clear understanding of the actual use of wine e-commerce but overlooks other potential explanatory factors.

Targeting online wine consumers in South Africa and Italy opens up the opportunity for using cross-national highly standardized product and communication strategies. However, different approaches are required to convert offline wine consumers to online wine consumers in South Africa and Italy.

This is the first cross-national study investigating consumers' attitude toward online wine purchasing in South Africa and Italy. Moreover, it offers a comparison of online and offline wine consumers in the two countries. In addition, the research offers a new point of view over consumers of Italy and South Africa, two important countries in terms of wine production and consumption that can be very beneficial for wineries owners and managers.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to the field of supply chain management and provide a detailed roadmap that supply chain researchers can utilize when applying this methodology.

Data collection focused on the evaluation of product returns management practices as perceived by business customers who operate in a supplier–customer context. In order to analyze the data using the QCA approach, a multi-step analysis was developed.

The results indicate five solutions that lead to high levels of customer satisfaction. The existence of multiple sufficient configurations for customer satisfaction indicates equifinality because multiple alternative solutions can lead to the same outcome.

The authors make a methodological contribution by applying the QCA method to the field of supply chain management and providing a detailed roadmap that supply chain researchers can utilize.

The authors provide managers five different and novel combinations of antecedents that lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction.

This study offers supply chain researchers a better understanding of when it is appropriate to use QCA and how to apply this methodology. From a theoretical perspective, past studies focused exclusively on the “net effects” of these antecedents, thus, did not capture the complexity of the relationships between these various antecedents and customer satisfaction. This is a noteworthy contribution as it highlights the complexity of the amalgam of relationships and factors that impact customer satisfaction within the context of reverse supply chain.

This study investigated business-to-business (B2B) repeated purchase intent and its relationships with customer value and customer satisfaction. Additionally, it explored the link between willingness to purchase again, switching costs and product returns management. Modern customers are more likely to switch suppliers; however, previous research suggests that this behaviour can be attenuated by a robust returns management experience. The purpose of this study was to provide a revised model of B2B repeated purchase intent that integrates the concept of product returns management and switching costs with existing B2B customer repurchase intent models.

First, a qualitative inquiry based on semi-structured interviews was conducted to test and develop a quantitative survey. Then a survey was then sent to business owners operating in the audiology industry. Finally, there were 317 responses.

The authors reveal the complex relationship between returns management and repeated purchase intent. Specifically, the authors’ results indicate that the effect of product returns on repurchase intent is opposite to the effect of customer value, depending on the value of customer value. The authors’ findings indicate that even when switching costs are low, firms can positively impact the intent to purchase again in the future if they increase the level of customer satisfaction. In addition, the authors’ findings indicate that in the context of B2B a high/low level of customer satisfaction does not trigger a positive effect of managing product returns on repurchase intent.

This study was the first to introduce the concept of product returns management to research on B2B repurchase intent.

This study expands the debate on the reasons that wine producers adopt sustainable, organic wine production. It aims to ascertain the enabling factors facilitating behavioral intention regarding such an adoption and whether these factors can be combined in a conceptual, measurable model.

A sample of 157 Italian winery companies was used. Results were analyzed through the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model, various quantitative methods and a multi-regression model.

Gender, age, role, experience in the sector and company existence do not affect behavioral intention. Conversely, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influences, facilitating conditions, attitude and self-efficacy strongly affect behavioral intention, whereas the determinant anxiety has a negative effect. Further, four factors account for most of the variability in behavioral intention.

The research is limited to Italian wine producers, and the discussion is based on quantitative results alone. Qualitative data would probably produce a richer, more comprehensive understanding of some phenomena.

Managers and entrepreneurs intending to invest in organic wine production can gain a detailed understanding of factors that affect the behavioral intention toward these technologies by comparing their attitudes with those of Italian producers.

Several studies have focused on wine consumers' behavior, but very few have investigated wineries' intention to adopt organic wine technology and the likely driving factors.

This paper aims to empirically examine career guidance services in terms of e-service quality, information quality and perceived value. It specifically examines students’ perceptions of quality to explore the effects of e-service quality and information quality on perceived value.

Students from the University of Verona participated in a quantitative survey, and 119 questionnaires were collected to assess the perceptions of respondents on e-service quality, information quality and perceived value about the career guidance e-service.

The results indicate that students perceive high value for the career guidance services; the perceived value depends on both service quality of the e-platform and information quality of the report; and efficiency is the most important dimension of e-service quality, while adequacy appears to be the most important dimension of the report.

These findings reveal that service organisations such as universities should invest in career guidance services, given that such services are appreciated by students and contribute to reducing the gap between education and job opportunities. In the design phase, service organisations should pay attention to students’ career development needs by developing e-platforms that are easy to use, appealing, efficient and with continuous system availability and reports that include relevant, understandable, reliable and adequate information. It is important to provide students with a report after they have completed a questionnaire.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research empirically evaluating the effects of perceived e-service quality and information quality on perceived value with specific reference to career guidance e-services.

This paper explores the Adoption of Technological Innovation (ATI) in the healthcare industry. It investigates how the literature has evolved, and what are the emerging innovation dimensions in the healthcare industry adoption studies.

We followed a mixed-method approach combining bibliometric methods and topic modeling, with 57 papers being deeply analyzed.

Our results identify three latent topics. The first one is related to the digitalization in healthcare with a specific focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The second one groups up the word combinations dealing with the research models and their constructs. The third one refers to the healthcare systems/professionals and their resistance to ATI.

The study’s sample selection focused on scientific journals included in the Academic Journal Guide and in the FT Research Rank. However, the paper identifies trends that offer managerial insights for stakeholders in the healthcare industry.

ATI has the potential to revolutionize the health service delivery system and to decentralize services traditionally provided in hospitals or medical centers. All this would contribute to a reduction in waiting lists and the provision of proximity services.

The originality of the paper lies in the combination of two methods: bibliometric analysis and topic modeling. This approach allowed us to understand the ATI evolutions in the healthcare industry.

The main purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate the attitude of pharmacists, as small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners, toward new technologies, and more precisely, toward the adoption of mobile apps for mobile health (mHealth). Such apps are generally used to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. This study measures pharmacists’ subjective experiences of mobile apps for mHealth and aims to understand how these pharmacists make sense of these apps.

The study adopted the narrative inquiry technique combined with critical event analysis. Participants' experiences were categorized based on how they viewed new technology tools. Interpretative inductive analysis identified precise aspects of the sense making illustrative of non-adoption or confused adoption of new technologies by pharmacists.

This study investigates to what extent new technology tools such as mobile apps affect retailers and more precisely the reasons why mobile apps are and are not adopted by retailers, as potential users, in the pharmaceutical industry. We identified four aspects of sense making that illustrated non-adoption or confused adoption of new technologies by pharmacists. These aspects are deeply discussed in the paper and are referred to the dimensions of confusion to confidence; suspicion to trust; frustration to education; mistrust to cooperation.

The main limitation of the present study is the limited number of territories investigated. This limitation arose because of the exploratory nature of the available research, which is generally based on case studies, and the lack of clear operationalization of the research available at the time of data collection. Another limitation is that the sample included only SMEs operating in the Italian pharmacy industry.

Many studies have highlighted the opportunities related to new mobile apps in the business-to-business market. Several have investigated customer interest in such new technology. If some contributions have indirectly investigated the acceptance of information technology tools, to the best of our knowledge, no study has been conducted to investigate directly and precisely the level of pharmacists' acceptance, use, and willingness to adopt information technology (e.g., mobile apps) for customer service in mHealth and mainly the reasons of non-adoption.